That gives him a unique perspective on marketing, especially since his first foray into marketing rightly earned him the title of amateur “growth hacker.”

Growth hacking is a way to grow a business/website/social profile as fast as possible with the least effort possible. It usually involves coding.

Karan considers himself a growth hacker because he used simple tactics and a few programming scripts to grow his Twitter following from 300 to 5,000 in three weeks as documented on Medium.com.

When I read the article on Medium, I immediately wanted to interview him to see if I could get any additional behind-the-scenes information on his Twitter growth strategies. Across a series of questions I sent him via email, he gave me a few gems on the specific tactics he used, and how he was able to hack the Twitter growth process.

1. Can you give us a quick idea of your background and why you wanted to grow your Twitter followers?

I am a part of the front end team at Crowdfire [a social media and content platform] … The reason why I wanted to grow my twitter audience/outreach was majorly because of a competition we had within the company called “Crowdfire Twitter Premier League.”

Some tests and their results provide the opportunity to open up bigger discussions.

They are true diamonds in the rough that reveal some interesting insights about not only customers, but also us. I don’t know about you, but sometimes a small look inward can have a big impact out the look outward.

In today’s MarketingExperiments blog post, I wanted to share with you an interesting experiment from a recent Web clinic that increased lead rate 331% by optimizing the company’s value exchange experience with prospects.

Primary Research Question: Which value exchange strategy will result in a higher conversion rate?

Test Design: A/B multifactor split

The MECLABS Institute research team hypothesized that one of the biggest problems with the control was it did not effectively connect momentum created by the content to the next logical step in the conversion process.

Simply put, the site had content and it had calls-to-action, but the problem was a substantial break in continuity between them.

Every company struggles with finding ways to convey the value of their product or service in an impactful way. The reasons for subpar value proposition can range anywhere from the value of the product being presented in a convoluted or confusing way to not reaching the customer when they are motivated to buy.

In some cases, the mindset or pre-existing biases can cloud the value proposition in a potential customer’s mind. The ability to overcome that destructive perception is key to guiding a potential customer through any sales funnel.

Clarity trumps persuasion — and a wrong perception

Anyone who has seen a webinar or attended a summit featuring MECLABS’ Managing Director, Flint McGlaughlin, has most likely heard him say, “Clarity trumps persuasion.” I want to take that one step further and say that there is a great feat in providing enough clarity to trump a wrong perception.

Earlier in my career at MECLABS, I spent time as the Lead Generation Specialist. In that role, our task was to generate sales-ready leads for our partners.

During that time, I was assigned to one of our more difficult partners — a global provider of outsourced investment management services.

My job was to speak with C-level decision makers of non-profit organizations and schedule meetings with one of our partner’s regional directors.

These meetings had one purpose: Communicate the distinguishable benefits of the firm and its outsourcing model to these decision makers. The problem was these DM’s didn’t want to talk to me.

The decision makers were well aware, as was our partner, that switching an investment management provider was an extremely long and involved process, and more often than not, the organization I was speaking with was happy with the status-quo and did not want to consider an alternative approach.

Their perception was that we were looking to force the organization to switch their investment model after the meeting. This wasn’t the case. Finally, after many rebuttals that weren’t resonating, we started to change our approach and messaging.

As part of that conversation, we were working on an ROI scenario, and we came to a point where it was necessary to figure out just how much opportunity there was to make improvements (while simultaneously understanding the customer ontology).

We started with his homepage:

Now typically in a process like this, one would look at a page in the live optimization style, mentally compare it to everything they’ve seen in the space, and record a number of recommendations and priorities to focus on.

In this case, I didn’t.

Instead, before making any recommendations, I took a glance at the page and asked him one question: “How are people getting to this page?”

He proceeded to give me the breakdown.

In that breakdown, I noticed something peculiar. His direct type-in traffic was unusually high, insomuch that I felt I needed to probe further.

We discussed an interesting case study where one B2B company generated a 96% increase in leads by simply altering how a piece of content was presented to its customers.

Today, we’ll review the highlights of that experiment.

Background: A B2B company selling thermal image cameras.

Goal: To generate more leads.

Research Question: Which landing page will generate the most leads?

Test Design: A/B variable cluster, radical redesign split test

Control

Our researchers hypothesized an uneven value exchange existed on the control and prevented a higher form completion rate. The page asked for more cost (form fields) than it provided in value.

The headline and copy contained company-centric messaging rather than focusing on the benefits visitors would receive.

Treatment

With the treatment, the team wanted to increase the value exchange by clarifying the value of the current offer, as well as reduce friction.

To lower the cost portion of the value exchange, the number of form fields was reduced. To increase value, the headline and page copy focused on customer benefits. Value was added in the instructions of the form as well. The image also more effectively showed the product in use.

Results

Clickthrough to submit the form increased 95.8% with a 99% level of confidence.